Writing articles is one of the best ways to promote your website

[sarpras]

More than 100 articles posted in over 300 websites with links back to your home site are very effective advertising. One of the main reasons for using articles to promote your website is that in each article, you are effectively creating a link back to your website.

[nozzmoking]

If you already have a bunch of original articles on your website, is it ok to submit these as is, or would they need to be re-written? If not, would Google see these as duplicate content and penalise? Hope you can clear this up for me.

[ashukairy]

They would be seen as duplicate content. And the main reason for using articles shouldn't be merely for linkbacks; you can drive a lot of traffic organically to your site because certain keywords and phrases are indexed and your site visitors use these terms and land on your site. If the articles are relevant to what the site has to offer; all of these visitors are potential clients.

[nozzmoking]

Thanks for clarifying this for me Ayat.

[dojo]

I stopped using this promotion technique because of 2 reasons:

1. my articles are mine, unique and exclusive to my own site. I work a lot for them and am not pleased to borrow my content to anyone. I also noticed a lot of these article directories have sub-quality informercial articles. Most of them promote a site claiming they offer information or repeat the same thing in many ways. I don't want my hard worked conten to be listed in those places. I don't read those bad articles, why would i dream people will look for my article in that garbage?

2. no traffic at all .. when I was 'younger' I did sacrifice some articles. And I regret dearly. I got 3-4 visits I think from those places. Surely not worth wasting my articles.

[perry321]

That's why you have to make sure they are the right sites first.

It does work. It's just a pain at times trying to find the right sites to submit your articles to.

[sangeeta_k]

Most sites that you submit your article to never publish them, claiming long lines.
I have also noticed that some sites publish your articles and but the link does not count.

Sangeeta

[Traffic Miester]

As a potential 'article submitter', I am concerned about any potential benefit to my site from an article that only links back to the ezine directory. The ezine directory of course, contains the complete article as does my site, which then links back to my site? Short of a few people actually reading the article and then hopefully, clicking a link on the ezine to my site, I see very little benefit for my site - Am I missing something, what or where is the benefit to my site? I suppose having a catchy closing statement to encourage a click to my site would be a good answer.

This method only creates more backlinks to the ezine directory rather than my site; the reason of course, for submitting an article is increase traffic to my site and not the ezine. Maybe I should look for an article ezine site that would allow for links to my site within the article but then, whoever uses the article could change it if they so desired...

As in a previous post on this subject, I am not interested in my content advancing the benefits of these article directories.
Can anyone suggest an article directory ( out of the many available ) that allows for direct links to my site within the posted content?

Article Dashboard Directory | Submit Articles | Search Find Free Content | Author Submission for example, only allows for a link outside of the article thereby forcing interested parties to go to that directory first. Once they have read the article, who knows if they will visit my site or not... this method does not promote my site very well and I am against it for that reason.

[yougottakickalittle]

As someone who has worked in newspaper journalism for 10 years, and now is in corporate public relations and dabbles in web site development on the side, I don't see the value in submitting "articles" to sites.

First, an article needs to contain facts, from unbiased sources - not just the opinions and knowledge of the author. If you're simply rattling off knowledge from your own head and sharing it with readers, that's not an article. That's something of an opinion piece, I guess. It has limited value to the reader.

Second, most of these article submission sites are of dubious quality at best. Do you go to article submission sites to get your information, or do you go to authoritative sources like CNN, your local newspaper, Yahoo News for news, or university and academic sites, corporate pages and government resources for research and factual data?

Third, if it takes you two hours to write and submit an article, are you getting a good return on investment? What else could you have been doing during that 2 hours to improve your own site, add new content, etc.? How much is your time worth? If you feel you are worth $30 an hour, did you get $60 of value in return for your effort in writing, editing and submitting? Or would it have been easier to pay $60 for an ad campaign and bring in hundreds of new visitors/customers to your pages to see the new, high-quality content you created for your own site?

[ashukairy]

But the value isn't in the actual submission of the article. Sure you get a linkback, but that's not the goal. IN the end, someone will recognize your work (this has happened to me several times) and your work gets posted on a reputable forum where you are getting more exposure and recognition as an expert in your industry. Not only is the traffic viewing the article, but many times people are passing the information along to colleagues and co-workers.

[yougottakickalittle]

I can understand what you're saying. Yes, if it is good, it may get noticed and reposted somewhere.

But I don't think that's the kind of business model/advertising strategy that strong web sites should follow. It places value on promotion rather than valuable website content.

I'd prefer to continue to develop good content for my site and allow traffic to grow organically, as well as through pay per click advertising and other methods.

Like I said, I don't seek out these internet articles as authoratative sources of information. To me, they are just clogging up the internet with meaningless drivel. I can't imagine who else would find an article, written by a relatively unknown author, expressly for the purpose of marketing their website, as something valuable.

You are free to pursue this route and I wish you all the best with it. But I don't think it ultimately adds value to anything, and that's really what customers want.

[ashukairy]

I never said that this was replacing the valuable content you should add on your site. Once you've included great articles on your site, this is reasonably inexpensive method to begin building a community around your site, which is essential. Once you get visitors hooked through an outside article, they are sure to come to your site to read more. And you may begin as a no name, but once your name is recognized within your industry because of the valuable content you offer on your site as well as article submission sites (such as ezine) people will begin flocking to you for information and news.

[seolee]

OK, I would appreciate an experts view on this:

I have written about 40 articles and I list them on my own website. I also submit each of those 40 articles to about 100 article sites (all page rank 2 upwards).

Am i really hurting myself by doing this, or should I:

a) only post on my site
b) only post on article directories

Please assist on this discussion.

[topboy]

i would post to both my site and the article directorys and articles themselves, back links are backlinks correct

[perry321]

"First, an article needs to contain facts, from unbiased sources - not just the opinions and knowledge of the author."

High-traffic sites are filled with good articles that are just opinions from the author. Look at how many books are in the bookstores that don't contain facts. Onion.com has a lot of visitors, but just about all their stories are made up.


"If you're simply rattling off knowledge from your own head and sharing it with readers, that's not an article. That's something of an opinion piece, I guess. It has limited value to the reader."

Say what?! *chokes on lunch* I'm sorry, but I don't know where you got that idea from.


"Second, most of these article submission sites are of dubious quality at best."

Agreed. One has ot submit them to the actual content sites, like Askmen, iVillage, MSN, About, or, this site.


"Third, if it takes you two hours to write and submit an article, are you getting a good return on investment?"

When it is submitted to multiple sites, and it can be used over and over again in the future, yes.


"But I don't think that's the kind of business model/advertising strategy that strong web sites should follow. It places value on promotion rather than valuable website content."

Do both.



"Like I said, I don't seek out these internet articles as authoratative sources of information. To me, they are just clogging up the internet with meaningless drivel. I can't imagine who else would find an article, written by a relatively unknown author, expressly for the purpose of marketing their website, as something valuable."

The people who continously go to content sites like the ones I mentioned above do.

But, hey, different strokes for different folks.

[perry321]

"Am i really hurting myself by doing this"

I don't understand...how can you be hurting yourself???

Practically all directories are worthless.

Part of what I do is take out one hour a day doing a search on sites that match my articles. I'll do a bunch of keywords, and just do a search on all thes sites, one page at a time.

Example: First I will do "dating advice." Then I will go through the first, oh...100 pages. Then I wil move on to the next keyword. So on and so on.

Another thing I do is to see where other popular writers are submitting their articles to, and then follow suite.

Personally, I don't worry about their page rank. Many, MANY sites have low PR, but they still get a lot of repeat traffic. Also, you may have a site with a PR of 1, but due to their hardwork and goal, it may be up to 7 in six months.

I put in the site's URL in Traffic Estimate - Web Site Traffic Analysis and Other Web Site Tools to get a rough estimate on their monthly hits.

I know, it is a rough estimate, but it still puts me in the ballpark.

That way I don't waste my time with sites that have less than, say, 30,000 monthly visitors. Yes, that estimator may be wrong on that particular site, but I'll pass anyway. I just don't have the time to take a chance on a site that may not have enough hits.

I don't know if it is your style, but maybe it is something to think about, nevertheless.

[braver55b]

Originally Posted by dojo

I stopped using this promotion technique because of 2 reasons:

1. my articles are mine, unique and exclusive to my own site. I work a lot for them and am not pleased to borrow my content to anyone. I also noticed a lot of these article directories have sub-quality informercial articles. Most of them promote a site claiming they offer information or repeat the same thing in many ways. I don't want my hard worked conten to be listed in those places. I don't read those bad articles, why would i dream people will look for my article in that garbage?

2. no traffic at all .. when I was 'younger' I did sacrifice some articles. And I regret dearly. I got 3-4 visits I think from those places. Surely not worth wasting my articles.

I'm surprised to hear that, most of the posters in marketing forums swear by writing articles, In fact I've written some article that I was going to submit to the directories.

[gulfscapes magazine]

Is there a better word count for articles?